How great RPGs would be without the decline?

[Cryomancer]

only object to it being the sole reason for most modern RPG being worse than the older ones.

Never said that is the sole reason.

But a question.

After Chris Avellone got cancelled by a FALSE retracted accusation and the industry started to hire a lot of "sweet babies" in place of writers like him, did the writing in RPGs become worse or better? Would anyone here say that there is no difference between Dragon Age Origins writing and Failguard?

barrelmancy

I always liked physics based interactions. And this not only in RPGs. I loved to play as Silver in Sonic games due his telekinetic powers and loved Star Wars force unleashed.

Imagine if SWTOR had force powers like this :



Instead of the same QTE/same rotation gameplay...

More RPGs needs physics like this :

 

[mondblut]

There's a fallacy there somewhere. OP seem to believe that since the tech got better RPG should, naturally, strive to move closer to emulate the experience found in pen and paper roleplaying games with a human game master.

Yes.

But he implies we don't have that due to the laziness, incompetence and greed present in the industry and, while to a certain degree that's true, what really happens is that videogames including RPG are quite expensive to make now which means that they have to be expensive to the consumers as well which in turn means that RPG are made to be looooooong so that the consumers feel that they got their money's worth.
And finally if a RPG is expensive to make and it also has to have a completionist lenght of 70h or more then it's easy to deduce that the vast majority of that content, such as quests, can't be complex too. And before you can say AAA slop you're knee deep in boring fetch quests, dialogue wheels, radiant quests, NPC with little to say and dungeon layouts that you're pretty sure are fairly identical from each other aside from minor differences.

We've heard that "RPGs are expensive to make" crap since mid-90s, when they were made by teams of 10-20 people with a 100k budget. This argument is full of shit. Art assets are expensive. Marketing to be noticed in the torrent of crap is expensive. Voiceover is expensive because somehow every shitty game is supposed to have it. Game design is like 0.5% of total production costs and has always been.

The reason RPGs no longer strive to emulate the experience found in pen and paper roleplaying games is because the videogames have been taken over by normies who don't care about the experience found in pen and paper roleplaying games. The audience wants flashy Marvel shit, and the developers deliver. After all, they're running a business, not an elitist underground art project only a few thousand conossieurs will appreciate. Alas.

 

[Iucounu]

If you read between the lines, he's basically talking about mixing like 10 different games into a colossal mega-rpg that would take a billion dollars to make.

Agreed, but at the same time most games seem to be made with the same Unreal Engine nowadays anyway; so why not license Unreal addons for each interesting feature instead of reinventing the wheel for every new game?

Another option is Early Acess financing, that way ARK Survival Evolved has managed to afford hundreds of dinosaurs, destruction physics and advanced AI.

 

[mondblut]

I imagine that if this had proven to be the default way of doing things, many games would be more like Dwarf Fortress and Cataclysm.

Good.

But second, it is also much harder to make this kind of game work with a static story.

Games with a static story can go fuck themselves.

 

[Cryomancer]

If you read between the lines, he's basically talking about mixing like 10 different games into a colossal mega-rpg that would take a billion dollars to make.

Agreed, but at the same time most games seem to be made with the same Unreal Engine nowadays anyway; so why not license Unreal addons for each interesting feature instead of reinventing the wheel for every new game?

Another option is Early Acess financing, that way ARK Survival Evolved has managed to afford hundreds of dinosaurs, destruction physics and advanced AI.

Here is a hot take. Most survival games are more RPG than almost all AAA """"rpgs""". Seriously. I was playing 7d2d and had better character progression than any AAA ESG bigcorpo RPG. When I was defending my base with 7,62 AP rounds in a LMG, I ended destroying part of my own base by shooting it trough zombies.

Pick Ass effect Andromeda. It was made with Frostbite engine yet it uses ZERO destruction. Destruction was one of the best aspects of BF games made in this engine.

 

[DannyRope]

After Chris Avellone got cancelled by a FALSE retracted accusation and the industry started to hire a lot of "sweet babies" in place of writers like him, did the writing in RPGs become worse or better? Would anyone here say that there is no difference between Dragon Age Origins writing and Failguard?

You're preaching to the choir with that one, friend. In my eyes, Sweet Baby Inc. and their ilk are nothing but grifters. Good for Chris Avellone getting justice and the truth out, I do like his writing a lot.

We've heard that "RPGs are expensive to make" crap since mid-90s, when they were made by teams of 10-20 people with a 100k budget. This argument is full of shit. Art assets are expensive. Marketing to be noticed in the torrent of crap is expensive. Voiceover is expensive because somehow every shitty game is supposed to have it. Game design is like 0.5% of total production costs and has always been.

The reason RPGs no longer strive to emulate the experience found in pen and paper roleplaying games is because the videogames have been taken over by normies who don't care about the experience found in pen and paper roleplaying games. The audience wants flashy Marvel shit, and the developers deliver. After all, they're running a business, not an elitist underground art project only a few thousand conossieurs will appreciate. Alas.

Fair enough, perhaps I drank too much Kool-Aid. Everything, from voice acting and art assets, is potentially expensive. And older videogames probably were expensive to make in their time. Let's agree then that the modern gaming industry, much like the film industry that so desperately try to imitate, is very risk averse. The companies that produce triple A games, that is.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Games didn't become shittier because tech advanced, but because cRPGs became mainstream.

Anyway, after the dark decade past Bloodlines, cRPGs were back and now they are in great shape again with good releases every year, so the only real issue with cRPGs becoming mainstream is the lost decade which otherwise could've had some good cRPGs.

This lost decade was a true gift. It allowed some people to finally deal with their backlog.

Now it's too late, decline ended and all hope is lost.

 

[Cryomancer]

older videogames probably were expensive to make in their time

getting justice and the truth out, I do like his writing a lot.

Me too. BUT.... No one is hiring him.

Cancel culture is literally guilty even after proven innocent.

 

[Tyranicon]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

 

[Gregz]

https://dailystormer.in/in-2024-china-began-their-domination-of-the-video-game-industry/

 

[Cryomancer]

praise BG3.

Is bg3 a great? If compared to modern AAA like forspoken and failguard yes. If compared to old school games, is not. I gave 6/10 to bg3 and most people here gave 8.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...me-of-your-live-and-10-the-best.148390/page-3

love with barrelmancy now

Nope. I always liked physics based stuff.

Hell in wh40k rt thread you can find a lot of posts complaining about the lack of telekinesis as much as offensive biomancy. Hell, my favorite sonic char is Silver.

https://dailystormer.in/in-2024-china-began-their-domination-of-the-video-game-industry/

I don't like Ccp and China, but if cdpr was sold to Tencent instead of adopting esg, I don't think that they would have decayed so much.

That said, The unique RPG from China that I played is Sands of Salazar. And liked it.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

Well at least in the last years we had some RPGs... some of them even good/interesting (skald, rogue trader, underrail, wasteland 3, bg3, ... but this is a matter of personal taste)

 

[OSK]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

You mustn't have been here for the dark days when all we had to look forward to were games like Din's Curse and Eschalon sequels.

 

[man_at_arms]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

Although in the last decade we have had more CRPGs than in the quality nadir that was the later 6th and all of the 7th console gens (which was devastating for PC games), I think that the RPGs have not lived up to their potential in the digital distribution age.

This is unlike the strategy, tactics and simulation genres that can boast a number of 5/5 games. Kickstarter propping up a bunch of washed up has-beens in Obsidian and inXile has probably done more harm than good, as it has not given the space for successor studios to rise out of the ashes, like what happened in the aforementioned strategy, tactics and simulation genres, where all the famous studios of those genres from the 90s and 2000s had shut down or been gutted.

Nostalgia has been hugely detrimental to RPGs in the last 15 years. On top of cash grabs and pale imitations, designs have calcified into rigid categories like "Fallout clone" and "Infinity Engine clone" where development is all about (re)-implementing specific mechanics, rather than designing mechanics to meet aspirational design requirements, like good character progression, choice & consequence, reactivity, entertaining combat, etc.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm looking forward to the period of RPG development where poor, no-name devs compete with AAAA studios using the same buggy, unoptimized garbage engines, leading to a complete failure of the corporate video game industry.

 

[Beans00]

We should all envision a world, where we are on fallout 77, without skipping any numbers and all the games being more incline than the last.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

The period 2012-2018 was one of hemi-semi-demi-incline in which developers looked backwards to neglected CRPG subgenres and mechanics in order to move forward, a tremendous improvement over the preceding wasteland era.

2019 was a terrible year for CRPGs, in which the best games were probably Outward (a promising survival Open World RPG from a new developer) and Operencia (Wizardry-like from a pinball game developer). The following four years were great for the combination of tactical RPGs and squad-based tactics games with RPG elements, but was a fairly lean period for CRPGs outside the tactical RPG subgenre. In 2024, aside from Dragon's Dogma II, there's been remarkably little for CRPGs.

 

[Storyfag]

I've never understood the opinion that "oh, we have good RPGs again" especially over the last few years.

2023 Codex GOTY was Jagged Alliance 3, and 2024 will very likely be one of two pixel games made by a tiny indie.

Ah yes, truly, the quality floodgates have opened again.

I think Konjad was making a jest.

 

[Mortmal]

In Baldur's gate 3, there is a physics engine that allows disintegrating doors with spells.

Never thought Victor would praise BG3.

It's about time to praise it. This is one of the rare games pushing things forward compared to the classics. To find a good D&D game before Baldur's Gate 3, or Solasta, you have to go back to Knights of the chalice, an obscure and unknown indie RPG outside the codex, and before that to Temple of Elemental Evil. Compared to the 90s when we had something new every month, finding something revolutionary is even more rare. I wouldn't speak of decline when the hobby is clearly dead.

 

[Cryomancer]

esigns have calcified into rigid categories like "Fallout clone" and "Infinity Engine clone" where development is all about (re)-implementing specific mechanics, rather than designing mechanics to meet aspirational design requirements, like good character progression, choice & consequence, reactivity, entertaining combat, etc.

Because the "new systems" can`t deliver the stuff that you mentioned. And marketing towards a new target audience is easier.

Look for eg, OwlCat. When they made a IE clone with PF:KM and WoTR, was great. When they made RT, was shit. Telepath powers fells like 4e, numbers are too bloated, the combat is all about stacking infinite turns and buffs, no telekinesis, no offensive biomancy, no different ammo types for Bolters...

It's about time to praise it

Yep. Beggars can`t be choosers. Is not as if we are getting Wizardry 6/7/8, BG2-SoA, VtMB, Arcanum, FL1/2 and other masterpieces every single month. In a world of Failguards and Forspoken, BG3 is a masterpiece. But compared to older classic games, is awful.

 

[man_at_arms]

Look for eg, OwlCat. When they made a IE clone with PF:KM and WoTR, was great. When they made RT, was shit. Telepath powers fells like 4e, numbers are too bloated, the combat is all about stacking infinite turns and buffs, no telekinesis, no offensive biomancy, no different ammo types for Bolters...

If a developer is so incompetent that the only way they can get by is by copy-pasting mechanics from better studios, and making a product far inferior to the Infinity Engine games anyhow, maybe they shouldn't be in business.

 

[MerchantKing]

But instead we got... dialog wheels, bullet sponge enemies, the same QTE/cooldown managing boredom for endless gear farming, stat-sticky itemization, nonsensical stupid armor design, pronouns in character creation, etc.

Blizzard, Bioware, and Bethesda. The three B's. These are the culprits.

 

[Juju Zombie]

OP, there are thousands of RPGs out there. Surely, some of them are good and exactly what you are looking for. You just haven't found them yet.

It sounds like you talk about big commercial RPGs made to suck out the maximum amount of money from the global population’s wallets. The romantic era of “true RPGs” didn’t end, it just took a backseat in order for the rich people to become even wealthier.

Godspeed and may the dice rolls come up in your favour.

 

[0sacred]

If nerds were still given a bunch of publisher money for making games for other nerds, we would see massive incline.

 

[Mortmal]

OP, there are thousands of RPGs out there. Surely, some of them are good and exactly what you are looking for. You just haven't found them yet.

It sounds like you talk about big commercial RPGs made to suck out the maximum amount of money from the global population’s wallets. The romantic era of “true RPGs” didn’t end, it just took a backseat in order for the rich people to become even wealthier.

Godspeed and may the dice rolls come up in your favour.

He’s looking for a tactical D&D RPG with a ruleset similar to AD&D 2E or retroclones like Sword & Sorcery. Something in the vein of the Gold Box or Dark Sun games. Unfortunately, nothing truly satisfying has come out in recent decades. The closest thing recently might have been Skald. It’s not a matter of searching—if such games existed, I’d definitely know about them.